'Dead for now:' CISPA halted in the Senate

Privacy advocates can breathe a sigh of relief as the controversial US Cyber Information Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) appears to be all but dead in the water, with all signs pointing to it being shelved by the Senate.

The bill, which was purportedly designed to allow the federal
government to share private user information with corporations in
situations of a suspected cyber threat, was the source of
widespread ire from privacy advocates.

Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), chairman of the US Senate
Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, confirmed that
CISPA’s passage seemed unlikely due to the bill’s lack of privacy
protections, which the Senator deemed “insufficient.”

According to US News & World Report, a representative of the
Senate committee stated that, though CISPA seems to be dead for the
time being, issues and key provisions from that bill may still
re-emerge.

"We're not taking [CISPA] up. Staff and senators are divvying
up the issues and the key provisions everyone agrees would need to
be handled if we're going to strengthen cybersecurity. They'll be
drafting separate bills," said the representative.

President Obama had threatened to veto CISPA in its current form
due to its lack of personal privacy provisions. A representative
with the ACLU, which along with the Electronic Frontier Foundation
(EFF) was one of the bill’s most vocal critics, also believed that
the legislation now faces an uncertain future.

"I think it's dead for now," says Michelle Richardson,
legislative council with the ACLU. "CISPA is too controversial,
it's too expansive, it's just not the same sort of program
contemplated by the Senate last year. We're pleased to hear the
Senate will probably pick up where it left off last year," she
told US News.

According to the EFF, CISPA represents a “dangerous”
level of access to private information, and would allow the
National Security Agency to obtain online communications data
without a warrant.

According to Richardson, it should be three months before any
cybersecurity legislation sees a vote in the Senate.